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With user notifications, 3rd-party app servers can send a single message to multiple instance of an app running on devices owned by a single user. This feature is called user notifications. User notifications make it possible for every app instance that a user owns to reflect the latest messaging state. For example:
The way this works is that during registration, the 3rd-party server requests a {@code notification_key}. The {@code notification_key} maps a particular user to all of the user's associated registration IDs (a regID represents a particular Android application running on a particular device). Then instead of sending one message to one regID at a time, the 3rd-party server can send a message to to the {@code notification_key}, which then sends the message to all of the user's regIDs.
Note: A notification dismissal message is like any other upstream message, meaning that it will be delivered to the other devices that belong to the specified {@code notification_key}. You should design your app to handle cases where the app receives a dismissal message, but has not yet displayed the notification that is being dismissed. You can solve this by caching the dismissal and then reconciling it with the corresponding notification.
You can use this feature with either the XMPP (CCS) or HTTP connection server.
The examples below show you how to perform generate/add/remove operations, and how to send upstream messages. For generate/add/remove operations, the message body is JSON.
To send a message, the application server issues a POST request to
https://android.googleapis.com/gcm/notification.
Here is the HTTP request header you should use for all create/add/remove operations:
content-type: "application/json" Header : "project_id": <projectID> Header: "Authorization", "key=API_KEY"
This example shows how to create a new notification_key for a
notification_key_name called appUser-Chris.
The {@code notification_key_name} is a name or identifier (can be a username for
a 3rd-party app) that is unique to a given user. It is used by third parties to
group together registration IDs for a single user. Note that notification_key_name
and notification_key are unique to a group of registration IDs. It is also
important that notification_key_name be uniquely named per app in case
you have multiple apps for the same project ID. This ensures that notifications
only go to the intended target app.
A create operation returns a token (notification_key). Third parties
must save this token (as well as its mapping to the notification_key_name)
to use in subsequent operations:
request:
{
"operation": "create",
"notification_key_name": "appUser-Chris",
"registration_ids": ["4", "8", "15", "16", "23", "42"]
}
This example shows how to add registration IDs for a given notification key. The maximum number of members allowed for a {@code notification_key} is 10.
Note that the notification_key_name is not strictly required for
adding/removing regIDs. But including it protects you against accidentally using
the incorrect notification_key.
request:
{
"operation": "add",
"notification_key_name": "appUser-Chris",
"notification_key": "aUniqueKey"
"registration_ids": ["4", "8", "15", "16", "23", "42"]
}
This example shows how to remove registration IDs for a given notification key:
request:
{
"operation": "remove",
"notification_key_name": "appUser-Chris",
"notification_key": "aUniqueKey"
"registration_ids": ["4", "8", "15", "16", "23", "42"]
}
To send an upstream (device-to-cloud) message, you must use the {@code GoogleCloudMessaging} API. Specifying a {@code notification_key} as the target for an upstream message allows a user on one device to send a message to other devices in the notification group—for example, to dismiss a notification. Here is an example that shows targeting a {@code notification_key}:
GoogleCloudMessaging gcm = GoogleCloudMessaging.get(context);
String to = NOTIFICATION_KEY;
AtomicInteger msgId = new AtomicInteger();
String id = Integer.toString(msgId.incrementAndGet());
Bundle data = new Bundle();
data.putString("hello", "world");
gcm.send(to, id, data);
This call generates the necessary XMPP stanza for sending the message. The Bundle data consists of a key-value pair.
For a complete example, see Implementing GCM Client.
This section shows examples of the responses that can be returned for notification key operations.
When you make a request to create a {@code notification_key} or to add/remove its
regIDs, a successful response always returns the notification_key.
his is the {@code notification_key} you will use for sending messages:
HTTP status: 200
{
"notification_key": "aUniqueKey", // to be used for sending
}
For a send operation that has a {@code notification_key} as its target, the possible responses are success, partial success, and failure.
Here is an example of "success"—the {@code notification_key} has 2 regIDs associated with it, and the message was successfully sent to both of them:
{
"success": 2,
"failure": 0
}
Here is an example of "partial success"—the {@code notification_key} has 3 regIDs associated with it. The message was successfully send to 1 of the regIDs, but not to the other 2. The response message lists the regIDs that failed to receive the message:
{
"success":1,
"failure":2,
"failed_registration_ids":[
"regId1",
"regId2"
]
}
In the case of failure, the response has HTTP code 503 and no JSON. When a message fails to be delivered to one or more of the regIDs associated with a {@code notification_key}, the 3rd-party server should retry.